The "Heart In A Box" Device Revolutionizing Transplants

It's like a scene from a science-fiction movie: a warm, still-beating heart arrives in a box just in the nick of time. Thanks to the company TransMedics, this vision has already become a reality. The company's Organ Care System, also known as the "heart in a box," is a wheeled cart that holds an encased heart that was essentially reanimated from a deceased donor. The cart has an oxygen supply and sterile heart chamber, where the donor heart is fed with blood and nutrients through tubing. In the past, transplant hearts came from healthy-bodied brain-dead donors. But doctors have already successfully transplanted hearts with the "heart in a box" from patients after they've died. According to doctors, this device could increase the number of donated hearts by 15-30%, "saving the lives of people who would otherwise die from heart failure."